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Javelin Missile guidance computer – Part 1: teardown [video]
- nomilk 3y agoI think this is a duplicate of this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38487203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38487203 But it surprises me it's not at the top of HN. An incredible video!
- riscy 3y agoSurprised to see so much use of FPGAs and not ASICs for cheaper mass-production of the missiles. I wonder if they went with the FPGAs for secrecy reasons (no need to hand over chip designs) or if they simply wanted the ability to patch bugs in the hardware. For the estimated manufacturing date of 1998, I would have imagined FPGAs were quite a bit more expensive.
- rasz 3y agoIts military procurement, there are no budget constraints. Ukrainian $700 drones taking out russian tanks is what happens when you actually have to count money spend on anti armor weapons.
- Manuel_D 3y agoI'm not sure if there'd be enough volume to justify fabbing and debugging custom silicon. 45,000 missiles have been built over the last 29 years. The newer models probably aren't using the same IR sensors as the ones from 1996, so FPGAs have the advantage being reconfigurable.